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The Enforcers Assault Rick Santelli

RUSH: Anyway, remember when Sarah Palin was introduced by Senator McCain, the left-wing media and a number of people, lawyers were dispatched to Alaska to go through her garbage and anything else to find anything incriminating? Planeloads of liberal lawyers. So poor old Rick Santelli of CNBC, I'm just wondering how long it will be before planeloads of liberal lawyers sweep into his neighborhood, go through his trash, check out his kids' dating habits, because the White House obviously could not have been happy with what he did yesterday. But the reports from Chuck Todd at NBC indicate that the White House was laughing about it.

TODD: The stuff that I've heard from the White House and people that have talked to me about this, you know, they -- I think they're kind of laughing that they're getting lectured by a trader, in their minds on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And it's like, you know, this is -- you know, they're sitting there going, it's like -- to take the real criticism where this was coming from, the idea that, hey, are -- are you helping out people that, you know, should be punished, the fact is, they say, look, we are helping out people that should be punished, and we wish we could punish, but that isn't our role. Our role is to try to create stability in the economy and in the housing market.

RUSH: What the hell did he say? Could somebody tell me what he said? Aside from the fact that the White House is laughing at that a little, insignificant trader -- but what was the rest of this? Chuck Todd's a professional newsman. He's the White House correspondent for NBC. "So they're sitting in the White House kind of, you know --" I mean this sounded like Caroline Kennedy, "You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, and, you know, they kind of punish people." The word "punish," he tells us the White House, the administration, is using the word "punish"! Here, play that again 'cause we have a dirty, lowly trader, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange lecturing the Messiah, and they laugh, a lowly little trader who is criticizing. But I want to figure out the rest of this.

TODD: The stuff that I've heard from the White House and people that have talked to me about this, you know, they -- I think they're kind of laughing that they're getting lectured by a trader, in their minds on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And it's like, you know, this is -- you know, they're sitting there going, it's like -- to take the real criticism where this was coming from, the idea that, hey, are -- are you helping out people that, you know, should be punished, the fact is, they say, look, we are helping out people that should be punished, and we wish we could punish, but that isn't our role. Our role is to try to create stability in the economy and in the housing market.

RUSH: Well, okay. They say, look, we are helping out people that should be punished? Who are they? Who are the people that should be punished? Well, I know, me, but it's not just me. It's the achievers, is it not? The producers. We should be helping out the people that should be punished and we wish we could punish, but that isn't our role. Our role is to try to create stability in the economy and in the housing market. Ohhh, I feel so sad for them, I feel so bad, so, so bad out there, because they want to punish people, but they don't have time. They don't have time to punish people because they have to come up with stability. Stability? They say this is stability. The only way you could call this stability is if the idea is to wreck the top of the economy so that everybody is miserable. We're helping out people that should be punished; we're laughing at a little trader lecturing us; we're laughing at the market.

By the way, it wasn't just the trader, Rick Santelli, it was all the traders that were hooting and hollering in agreement with him that the White House is now laughing at and telling Chuck Todd, yeah, there are some people we wish we could punish. Chuck, you're not doing 'em any favors. Brian Williams and Matt Lauer assaulted Rick Santelli for daring to criticize Obama's plan on the Today Show today. Fill-in host Brian Williams said, "What would you do about all the folks who have just been through this era where they were told there were bucket loads of money, they were told it was almost their patriotic duty to own a home, whether or not they could afford it." For crying out loud, get the premise of this question. Let me take a break here. I have to take a break. The question of Brian Williams is, these poor people who never had a chance at repaying the loan, they are the victims. They were told there were bucket loads of money, they were told it was almost their patriotic duty to own the house, whether they could afford it or not. Who?

Somebody produce for me one person who went and bought a house 'cause they thought it was their patriotic duty because somebody in Washington told them it was their patriotic duty. I'm going to take a break here, you know? I'm going to take a break and say, hey, you know, hey, you know, you know, we're going to punish, we wish we could punish, we need to punish people, but we gotta, you know, have stability, and, why, we're going to defend these people who just did the patriotic thing and bought a house when they couldn't afford it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I'm still trying to figure this out. I think I'm on the road to having it figured out. Now, we're telling people that it is their "patriotic duty" to rent a home or an apartment now and give up the house they could not afford and cannot afford now. So the point is now they know they cannot afford it. Under Brian Williams' kind of logic, they have a duty to move. Have they capped Brian Williams' salary at $500,000 yet? You have a relation with him over there, Kit. Call him up and ask him, because if they haven't, they should. We got toxic waste in the market, but I gotta tell you we got toxic information in the media, and I don't see a plan to get rid of it. Now, here's what the reporter is saying, like Chuck Todd, he's saying that the White House is laughing at being lectured to by, of all people, a trader. Perhaps not because the trader is a peon but because the White House thinks that Wall Street and traders are to blame for this mess. As to the core of Santelli's complaint, "Yeah, the White House plan is rewarding people who should be punished, but the White House's job is financial stability." So basically the White House is telling Santelli to bend over.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now we go back to this poor old Rick Santelli, who knows to bend over -- forwards or backwards, either way will do. Brian Williams grilling a colleague. Rick Santelli at CNBC, it's all NBC. Williams says, "What would you do about all these people who have been through this era, where they were told that they were bucket loads of money, they were told it was almost their patriotic duty to own a home, whether they could afford it or not, who do we see about them? What would you have them do?"

SANTELLI: If 92% are paying their mortgage and the other 8% aren't, we really can't separate out, Brian, the 8%. How many were gaming the system, trying to flip houses, way beyond their means, didn't put accurate information on their loan information, versus some of the hard cases that we really ought to do something about? So, you know, you think these 92% that are planning on cutting back, having problems, the 401(k)s or 201(k)s, but they're knuckling under. I think that the administration he needs to broadly help everybody so they don't disenfranchise the confidence of the 92%.

RUSH: I'm still stuck by this question. This is the first I've heard that these people from the Community Redevelopment Act... Is that what it is? It's the Community Redevelopment Something. Reinvestment Act. Well, whatever it was, that caused the lenders to be forced by the government to make loans to people that could never, ever pay 'em back. I want somebody to produce for me one of these borrowers who went into a bank on the basis, "Hey? Hey! They told me to come get a house. It's my patriotic duty to come get a house. They told me to come see you, that there's bucket loads of money in here." Where the hell does the premise for that question come from? Anyway, then poor old Rick Santelli had this exchange with Matt Lauer.

LAUER: President Obama came to office saying the time for sacrifice is now. No more rhetoric about it. We're going to actually have to do it. Isn't this a first example where those of us who can afford to pay our mortgages and our taxes are being asked to sacrifice?

SANTELLI: Well, Matt, did they actually ever "ask" you to sacrifice?

LAUER: They're asking us right now!

SANTELLI: Well, they're legislating your choice away, though. You know, Matt, there's a lot of charitable people in this country that want to help. The part of this story that has struck a negative chord -- and this is about traders or elite. I am bombarded everywhere I go. What this boils down to is you have to treat everybody fairly. Those 92% are knuckling under as well.

RUSH: Rick! Rick, please listen to me. This is how they define fairness. The 92%, it's unfair that 92% can pay and 8% can't or whatever the numbers are. The 92% are damn well going to find out what it's like to not be able to pay by having to pay for some others. That's what this is about. It's about making you mad. Now, he's got a great point here. Matt Lauer: "Well, shouldn't we all sacrifice?" Hey, Matt, did you vote on that? Did you Obama tell us any of this during the campaign? Did he say, "Those of you who can pay your mortgage are going to help also pay those who refused to pay?" Were we told this during the campaign? That's Santelli's point. (interruption) I know. Lauer and Williams sound like Obama enforcers. So here's this guy that's going off the reservation on CNBC, and here come the enforcers, the consiglieres. They gotta get this mind right. So Brian Williams asks, "What do you do about the foreclosed home next to yours, Rick? That was the crux of this. It was the mortgage crisis that started this off and got us into this."

SANTELLI: Listen, when houses were at their high prices, did you look at your house as an investment and think, "Oh my God. I don't think my house is worth that but maybe I ought to sell"? There's a lot of Americans that feel bad and if the house on the left or a house on the right goes into foreclosure, the experts are saying you suffer, too. But if you let judges break contract law --

LIESMAN: The trouble, Rick --

SANTELLI: -- this innovative country everybody knows is going to snap back --

LIESMAN: The market --

SANTELLI: We are going to send a bad message to world investors.

LIESMAN: The market can't fix this!

RUSH: The other voice there was Steve Liesman (or Lice-man, I don't know how to pronounce it) of CNBC, who told Rick, "The market can't fix this." The market can't fix this? The market is the only thing that can fix it. (interruption) "Fix it" as in make it go away, yes? (interruption) What do you mean it's ridiculous? What do you mean you can't just make what go away? What are we talking about? (interruption) What? What? What? We can't make what go away? (interruption) Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. (interruption) I'm not doing... (interruption) I'm not pretending. Let's just... Let's just... (laughing) I'm having a big argument with a member of my staff who agrees with Steve Liesman. You think the market's the only element that can fix this! The market cannot fix this, that only the government can fix this? (interruption) I'm getting no answer. (interruption) Only the...? (interruption) Uh-huh. The market is. The market is not what it is. The market's not being allowed to be what it is. The market has been corrupted. The market's been corrupted since the first stimulus a year ago. We're not looking at the market. We have "stimulus." It isn't working.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My staff, my loyal staff member, trusted aide-de-camp, H.R. shouting in my ear, and I know what the shouting was about. Here you have this guy Rick Santelli, and Rick Santelli is boiling over like other average Americans at being told he's done something wrong by succeeding and these guys on the Chicago Mercantile Board, they're being told they've done something wrong and they're going to have sacrifice, and they're going to have to pay for people who now we are told bought their houses they couldn't afford because they were told it was the patriotic thing to do. That is absolute chump BS. That's the first I've heard it. We've got members of the media acting as enforcers for the Obama administration, harassing Rick Santelli, a colleague of theirs who dared speak out against The Messiah so he's gotta be forced to bend over. We've already stimulated the economy, starting a year ago, $180 billion or $200 billion, the checks that you got for $600 or whatever. We're up to $1.7 trillion in stimulus. My friends, if this was the way to stimulate and grow an economy, we'd see signs. We see the opposite. We see economic decline.

So the question, what's going to fix this? It's the wrong question. Because the question assumes that there is a mechanism, something somebody can do to take us back to 13,000 at the Dow, to take all of your home value you've lost and restore it, that your 401(k) is going to be replenished. Folks, there is nothing. There is no single thing any magician can do to make that happen, because what has happened has taken place as a result of tampering with the market. Now, the market also makes mistakes in addition to people tampering with it. If left alone, it's almost impossible for economies to go into recession. So what screwed up the market? Let's not forget this. What screwed up the market was not a bunch of people being told there's bucket loads of money inside that bank, it's a patriotic duty for you to own a house you can't afford, go in there and get it. What happened was that a bunch of liberal Democrats decided the impoverished in this country have been taking it on the chin for too long it's not fair that they don't have homes. And since those people know that the poor and impoverished can't afford homes, we're going to find a way to make 'em be able to be in homes, and the people paying for it are not going to know they're paying for it.

So it's hello Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it's hello subprime mortgage market, called the Community Reinvestment Act or what have you, started by Carter and then Clinton comes along, and Janet Reno and the AG and Jamie Gorelick and all these people at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, they were telling people, these lenders, if you don't lend this money, we're going to investigate you. The government is the essential market tamperer here. Everybody is blaming the speculators and so forth, there may be a lot of people to blame here, but the focal point of blame should be aimed at Barney Frank, at Christopher Dodd, at any Democrat member of Congress who resisted efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The SEC, which was not regulating what the banks were doing to try to give value to these worthless mortgages that we're now being told are patriotic. The insults to our intelligence just add up every day. Every day we're here we have our intelligence insulted by the toxicity in the Drive-By Media.

We have a toxic disease in this country, and it's the media. We've got toxic assets as a result of the government tampering in the mortgage business. We've got debt out the wazoo. We have people who lived lives of substance when there was no "there" there and they wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Nobody's innocent here, except those of you who have no clue any of this was going on, you're playing by the rules, you're going to your lender, you're getting your mortgage, you don't know it's being packaged and sold at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, you don't know that it's being used to subsidize people that can't pay, and now all of a sudden, you're being told for things you had nothing to do with that you are the ones getting punished, that you have to pay for these people who couldn't pay in the first place, 'cause it's just too tragic. And now they're saying, what happens if that home next to you is in foreclosure? What happens to the value of your house? The answer is what the hell have you done to the value of my house already without these foreclosures? And, by the way, a foreclosed house -- this is the market speaking -- is a hell of a buy opportunity.

Do you know the California first-time buyer market is up 85% on sales of the purchase of foreclosed houses 'cause you can get in them much cheaper than you ever could, starter houses, first time buyers. Just get out of the way, the market will work. We are the market. The government tampers with the market. The government sucks things out of the market in the form of taxation, deficit spending, and now the government's in the business of laughing at the free market. The government is an albatross on the market. If left alone, we adapt, we respond to all kinds of market conditions, including artificially low interest rates created by the Fed which helped create the boom Brian Williams and Lauer don't talk about. Poor people respond to government policies pushed by leftists that make loans available to them to buy homes they can't afford. The market didn't create these conditions. The market is responding to them. The market's responding by short selling the stimulus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 53 right now. It's been down as much as 200 today.

The investors, the people who are the real poll on the state of the economy are not investing. They are betting on the market continuing to go south. They're taking their money out of it in general. Some stocks are doing better than others. But the overall DJI is down, and it's been down over 2,000 points since Obama was immaculated. Well, since he was elected. From November 4th through February 12th the market has plunged more than it plunged in September and October under Bush. You don't know that because it's not being told to you because of the toxicity in our system that is the Drive-By Media and it's poor excuse for journalists and reporters. So we're trying to adapt to it, everybody's trying to react to the market. You heard Dave LaRoe call from his little restaurant in Grand Rapids, Ohio. He's watching Oprah and Suze Orman tell people not to go out to eat. He adapts, he calls here. He does something. He's gotta counter all of this negative attention being focused on the private sector. But there's not a fix.

Folks, Obama doesn't have it, God doesn't have it. Biden doesn't have it. Reid doesn't have it, Pelosi doesn't have it, Barney Frank doesn't have it. There is nothing that is going to come along tomorrow and restore the value of your house, replenish your 401(k) and your kids' college fund, take the Dow back to 13 on the way to 15; it isn't there. It could be again, but not with the leadership we have now. The leadership we have now is continuing to stand idly by while the market continues to plunge, unemployment continues to rise, they're spending money hand in fist claiming it's going to stimulate the economy, $1.7 trillion, that should be some stimulus. There ought to be some new jobs out there. There ought to be some positive attitude. There ought to be somebody that's feeling good, willing to invest in this economy. So far, we don't see it. We see Obama promising it, but we don't see it. If all this stimulus that we've already done is so magical that it's going to start the immediate uptick of the economy, somebody tell me when.

Keynesian stimulus packages have been shown to fail each and every time they've tried and yet here we are again, and it's not because the people think it's gonna work. Not as you would define. Working for you is the value of your house comes back, your risk of losing your job declines, your 401(k) is replenished, that's success to you. That's a plan working for you. To the Obama administration, the plan working is exactly what we're getting. The market spiraling out of control, no end in site, unemployment going up, and Obama telling us it's gonna get worse before it gets better. That's chaos. The more chaos, the more you will accept whatever your government tells you is the next fix, and then when anybody steps outta line, like poor old Rick Santelli, the agents of toxicity representing the Obama administration in the media will make sure that he is discredited and laughed at and made a fool of as quickly as possible. That's what's happening. There is no fix. There never has been a fix. There is only corruption and what breaks. The market will come back if it's left alone, but the current crop doesn't trust the market, don't like the market, too much freedom for them in the market.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Chip Reid, CBS News, had this exchange with Robert Gibbs of the White House press briefing moments ago.

REID: Aside from Rush Limbaugh and that cable rant on the floor of the exchange --

GIBBS: (cackling)

REID: -- there really does appear to be some anger out there from people who just don't believe the president when he said that only people who acted responsibly are going to be helped here. How can you assure people that you're going to reward only homeowners who acted responsibly?

GIBBS: Well, I -- I've watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I'm -- I'm not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives. But the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, to stay in their job, pay their bills, to send their kids to school; and to hope that they don't get sick or that somebody they care for gets sick and sends them into bankruptcy. I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader, that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that.

RUSH: Do you understand what he just said? In the first place, Chip Reid? Come on, grow some. Grow a set here. What do you mean, "Aside from Rush Limbaugh and the rant on the floor there's some real anger..."? I am real America, Mr. Reid. Rick Santelli is real America, Mr. Reid. But did you catch what Gibbs said? Now we know what Brian Williams meant and now we know what Chuck Todd meant by punishing. "I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader, that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that." So you people in the Chicago Merc board, you're the enemy. We've now this confirmed. There is never... Never do I recall a White House press secretary targeting individuals or a group.

He's the president of all the people! This administration is making no bones about who it hates. Derivatives traders? How do you know they even trade derivatives at the merc? How do you know that? "We don't care what Santelli said. He represents people we're getting even with," and they are going to bail out people who aren't paying their mortgage, and I don't have time for the last one, but it was a follow-up question, and Gibbs comes at Santelli again. It was a Chuck Todd question, criticism on the housing plan similar to the criticism that came in the bank bailout. How do you justify here that this is fairness? And he comes at Santelli again with the comment on the whole notion of derivatives traders, and we don't know where Santelli lives -- yet. We don't know where he lives. I think he means who are his neighbors and might they be suffering or might they be okay.